Palaeoloxodon huaihoensis
During the Ice Age, the sea level plummeted and the Taiwan Strait disappeared, creating a new land and becoming a new world for the ancient elephant to open up territories. The ancient diamond-toothed elephant traveled long distances from the Huaihe River in North China, but left many habitat traces and remains.
After the glaciers melted, the Taiwan Strait reappeared like now. The fossils of ancient elephants buried in the seabed were trawled up by fishermen by chance. The fossils have become a good evidence that ancient elephant crossed the sea and the clues for paleontological research.
Its scientific name is Palaeoloxodon huaihoensis, which is a new species of genus Palaeoloxodon distributed in the eastern margin of Eurasia. Because the middle part of the molars of this elephant was abraded and enlarged, forming a rhombus-like shape, paleontologists called it as the ancient rhombus-molar elephant, i.e. “loxodon type”. The most special feature of this Huaihe paleoloxodon is that the frontal bone is large and protrudes forward, forming an eave-like transverse ridge above the nostril.
Through the cooperative research of the National Museum of Natural Science and the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, the original incomplete ancient elephant fossils were analyzed, restored, assembled, and then recast, turned and mounted. A height of 3.5 meters with 6 meters long, the complete ancient elephant appeared in front of everyone again. Based on its robust body and well-developed incisors, it is presumed to be a mature male individual.